Thursday, December 27, 2012

Changeling Lost Vegas: Orientation (Part Two)

The second half of my interlude post for the players of our G+ Changeling the Lost Campaign.First Half Here.

KAPPACHANI TALKS ABOUT THE WHY
OF IT

“Me, I
just lucked into being a part of the Winter Court. Each one has a few people
considered Courtiers- who handle the business and ritual parts of the Court. In
my case, that’s primarily business shit. Simon, Questions-So-Loud, and sometimes
Mrs.
Pang wrangle weird things. We only have six Courtiers in Winter, but
the two bigger ones have something like a dozen, plus various hanger-ons. But
they have to handle a lot more and they take on more responsibility keeping
things together. They have influence but they also spend more energy and
resources making sure this whole place doesn’t burn down around us.

But
most people aren’t Courtiers, though they may be associated with a Court. If
you get through your probationary period without killing anyone, or turning out
to be a plant, or doing something monumentally stupid, then you’re accepted
into the Freehold. You take a modest pledge and the Freehold offers you
protection. That means if you need help, you can ask for it. You can get protection
and generally if you’re in, you have people watching your back. You can go one
step further after you’ve done tasks for the Courts. You can request the
patronage of one of the Courts. In this case, they’ll help you out more.
They’ll make sure you have a roof over your head, they’ll help you get settled
into the life you want, and they’ll give you a modest stipend to keep you
afloat. In return, they might ask for seasonal tasks, glamour gathering, or
just helping out with things. That’s why Terrible Job’s here. He’s clearing a
debt.

Plus
when they come looking for new people to bring up, they usually go look at
their clients first. At least that’s how it is supposed to work.

If you
don’t pledge to the freehold? Well in that case, people take a hands-off
approach. Changelings of the freehold won’t help you- in fact they aren’t
supposed to speak to you. There are a few of those around in Las Vegas-
weirdoes, people with bad reputations, exiles who crossed one of the Courts and
couldn’t find help elsewhere. Simon tries to help those people move on to
another city if he can. But some people are just Broken.

Part
of the problem is that unlike other places, it can be harder to make a living
in Vegas. The Courts make pacts and create ties with businesses as a means of
generating money. But in Vegas, money, wealth, luck, and fate are all tied up
together. When you start mucking with one, you tug on the others. The Courts
generally switch through businesses and people, because if they run them too
long there’s a backlash of fate, where that reverses and burns you back twice
as hot. A gamble, it is always a gamble here. But even more dangerous…mucking
with money and chance, well let’s just say that can be like ringing a dinner
bell for the Others. The ones in Vegas, they can smell that, especially when
glamour, Wyrd or contracts come into play.

Some
pass-through Changelings will somehow make it over the In-Betweens and into
Vegas. And they won’t listen or we won’t spot them in time. And they’ll go to
one of the casinos and put a chain on luck, and they’ll keep tugging and
tugging. And they’ll win big…but they won’t be able to find their way out.
Something will come for them.”

TERRIBLE JOB TALKS ABOUT FETCHES

“When
they took you…well there’s a chance they left something in your place. Maybe
they showed it to you, made you watch. Mine did.

It
looks like you, sounds like you, and even when it fucks up your life your
friends and family won’t know it isn’t you.

You’ll
have to decide how you want to deal with that. It’s a personal decision. Some
avoid it, some destroy them. Some people try to go home after that. No one can
talk you out of that, but I’ll tell you it is a bad idea. But you’ll have to
find out why yourself.

And
the fetches, well some of them know they’re bad. Some of them don’t. Some of
them bear some of their maker’s power- making them extra dangerous. The nature
of fate is this- even if you weren’t taken from Vegas…your Fetch will end up
here if it is still around. That’s just the way these things work.

And if
you kill you fetch…you have to be prepared for the consequences. Things happen
when you do that- bad, good, in-between. It can break you if you’re not
careful, killing your doppelgänger.”

KAPPACHANI TALKS OTHER THINGS

“No,
that’s not a joke. There’s other stuff besides us around.

Well,
mostly werewolves and wizards.

Stop
laughing. Seriously. The Autumn Court knows the most about that kind of stuff.
I used to think that they were just broken Changelings, but Hopscotch
Takebacks told me that wasn’t it- or at least that wasn’t all of it.
I’ve only crossed paths with the werewolves once. They’ve got their own ways
and grouping and they don’t seem exactly like Beasts. I don’t know.
They’re…well…they’re kind of boring. Take a second and picture for yourself the
most clichéd form of werewolf, like from a movie or TV show. That’s pretty much
how they act. Most of them, anyway. There are a few exceptions.

The
Wizards- and again this is second and third hand for the most part- have some weird
division. I’m not even sure they’re the same thing. There are apparently a few
serious dudes with some real power who have a kind of magic company. Hopscotch
says to steer well clear of them. But then there’s the scattershot street
mages. Supposedly. Crazy people- ladies and guys- picture homeless Big
Lebowski’s. They can do some stuff based on their craziness. I don’t know if
they’re really wizards or just somebody who managed to activate a token or ate
a glamour fruit and didn’t die.

Other
stuff? Yes, there’s other stuff. Ghosts, demons, poltergiests, Frankensteins,
voodoo priests, crazed god-touched, and Wayne Newton. I mean, it is Vegas,
you’d expect all of that here, right? No vampires, though. But again, rumors
and gossip so who knows what’s true, what’s coming from broken people, and
what’s someone’s plot.

“There
are plenty of dangers out there…but keep in mind you can also do real damage to
yourself if you’re not careful. That’s especially true around the holidays. The
holidays are bad.

Sorry,
yeah. So you’ve been in a place where you had to do things to survive. I’m not
going to make you talk about that. Hell, no one wants to talk about that. But
you know it changed you, made you different and I’m not just talking about how
we look now. We have pieces missing- memories, feelings, bits of our soul
stuff- and where that got torn out they poured glamour and wyrd in. Who you are
now has to figure out how to balance and contain all of that.

I’m
not putting this well…

Sometimes
Changelings break. It can happen when you do something that one part of you
rebels against. It can happen when your Changeling instincts kick in and
someone gets hurt. It can happen when self-preservation or fear make you into
someone you don’t want to be. And it can happen when you see something of your
Keeper in yourself…

They
call it clarity, your vision of the world. As you have…problems, conflicts…you
can lose some of that clarity. When you do you have a harder time keeping
straight what’s real and what’s imagined, what’s right there and what’s magic.
You might get flashbacks to your life before or to your durance. You might
develop problems. I knew someone who had to stop and count beans when he saw
them. Run his hands through them and count them. That was a problem. We
couldn’t go a bunch of places…

Why
beans? I don’t know. Something in his past, in his life that had to do with
that. He could never explain it. Good guy too, always decent so I don’t know
what he did that pushed him. It might not have been something he did- sometimes
weirdness, the Hedge, and other things can hit against your clarity. I’ve heard
it is worst for the Fairest, but I couldn’t say.

The
key is balance, at least that’s how I see it. Others are different I know Simon
and his Winter folk believe in talking about it. Changelings who avoid other
changelings and just spend time with people and those who only spend time with
us- they’re most vulnerable.

Oh, by
broken I mean there’s something seriously wrong with them. Sometimes it drives
them back into the Hedge, sometimes it makes them do awful things, sometimes
they start seeing things. You can’t always tell who has the madness on them- it
isn’t exactly like other madness, the kind you play with Contracts for. The
real danger is that the broken ones get inured to the bad stuff, they start to
not care about their actions and what those mean to themselves and the people
they call friends.

He
shot himself. Last Christmas. Dumbass beancounter…”

KAPPACHANI TALKS HOBS

“So
apparently the Hobs around here are a little different from those elsewhere- at
least that’s what some of the travelers have said. They’re better organized,
more ready to put pressure on Changelings, and less…feral…

They’re
also highly divided which is a good thing. The most together of them live in
the Close Hedge, in one of several spots near the major Trods…especially in the
hedge by the Strip. They used to be up by Fremont, so they say, but they all
scattered down to the Neon at some point. If you go a little deeper into the
Hedge then you get rougher and nastier Hobs- creatures and awful things hunting
around.

But
our Hobs, the real Vegas Hob, they run Casinos…Goblin Markets of a kind where
Hobs and Changelings go to pick things up- sometimes that means gambling,
sometimes bargains. You can find all kinds of things there tokens, contracts,
pets, fates, identities, hedge fruit, and other modest weirdnesses. You want to
be really careful though- some of those places are better than others, some
have special rules they want to catch you in. Like every other place in Vegas,
the house always wins in the end. But if you play your cards right you can come
away with some things you want- just at a price.

Some
Hobs leave the Hedge. They’re usually oddballs with a weird fate or fancy to
them. Last year we had to clear out a batch of them with a dirty linen fetish
from a rundown hospital. That was weird. Oh, and of course there’s the Taxi
service. We haven’t talked much about the hedge and the Trods. You’ll want to
get really settled before you go back into the thorns, but it can be a useful
means of escape or travel. But it takes some know-how and skill to do it
successfully. On the other hand, one of the Hob groups operates, I guess you
could call them vehicles. If you absolutely have to get somewhere quickly or
there’s some kind of traffic jam, you can use them.

Settle
the price before you get in. Always.”

TERRIBLE JOB WHISPERS ABOUT THE
OTHERS

“So
here’s the bad news. Keepers sniff around Las Vegas. To be specific they say
there are twenty-one Keepers- a Blackjack hit of nastiness. They take people,
play games, feed on dreams, gamble, and fight with one another. All of that
keeps them caught up and distracted. From time to time one of them does catch a
scent- someone runs the tables too long. A Courtier plays with something they
shouldn’t. A questing one ends up entangled. Slavers pop up. It doesn’t matter.
Bad stuff can go down then. But Vegas is a big city and there’s plenty of room
to run and hide. And occasionally someone manages to eke out a victory. But
unless you’re in a Motley, joined together, people generally won’t help when
that kind of thing goes down.

There’s
lots of fine talk about help and support and that’s great for the day-to-day. But
when the big noise comes down you can expect the first thing they’ll try to do
is find a reason why this is happening to you. What you did to bring this on
yourself? You’ll figure out who your friends are based on the price they
charge. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I can’t blame anyone for not
wanting to get up on stage with the tigers. There’s bright lights and big city
here, but we all carry just as much fear as anywhere else. The big Courts will
downplay that- that’s in their interest. They each have a philosophy of that.

We
know some of the twenty-one, not all. No, I don’t know how they know that
number. That’s just what I’ve always heard. Some of the big ones we can spot
and see the signs of The Friendly One, First Fire, The Director. They have turf
battles of a kind, which works to our advantage- they’re competitive. Some of
them have spots and they even have a few shared places, like Circus, Circus.
Don’t ever go there. Don’t ever cross off the sidewalks and lines near there.
That’s a bad place. A very bad place.

WHAT YOU GET FROM
THE TIME IN THORN HAVEN (BESIDES ALL OF THE INFORMATION)

They
provide you with a smart phone. It’s a monthly generally anonymous phone with
all the frills

and utility of something you’d give your grandparents. But given
the advances in technology in 8 years, it actually has some utility.

They
also give you a basic fake state-issued ID. That will allow you to pass basic
checks, rent, open a bank account etc. However it will not withstand much
scrutiny. Imagine it as a fragile version of the New Identity merit. Kappachani
suggests not getting arrested with it.

Everyone also gets an
additional free Specialty from the
following list. Specialties give you +1 die when attempting a related action.
The specialties represent something that struck your interest while you were
listening.